Manga Month: Q And A With Dark Horse Manga Editor Carl Horn

While the manga phenomenon in the U.S. may still seem relatively new, Dark Horse Comics has been publishing manga for over 20 years. From classics such as Lone Wolf and Cub to a brand new series from manga superstars CLAMP that will be released simultaneously in both Japan and the U.S. for the first time ever, Dark Horse has remained dedicated to manga through an individual approach to properties for audiences of all tastes. We spoke to Editor Carl Horn about the history of Dark Horse Manga and upcoming projects that are on the horizon.

But instead of publishing manga for 23 years, we've only been doing it for 21. Two years after Dark Horse got started, in May of 1988, we published our first manga, Kazuhisa Iwata's adaptation of the movie, Gojira (a.k.a. Godzilla). After that, we hooked up with Toren Smith of Studio Proteus in San Francisco. Toren probably did more to help bring manga to the United States than any other individual (as opposed to company or organization). He had already done a lot to promote anime on the West Coast (he helped organize the event that was an ancestor of Anime Expo) but also had a drive to get manga here as well. He famously sold all his earthly belongings and staked everything on a 1986 trip to Japan in order to make the contacts necessary. The people in the industry he met there could see he truly appreciated their work and had confidence Toren could adapt it skillfully into English.

For 14 years, Dark Horse had a relationship with Studio Proteus whereby Toren would license the manga and adapt it into English, and then Dark Horse would handle its publishing and marketing. Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Blade of the Immortal, Oh My Goddess!, Gunsmith Cats and many more were Studio Proteus titles published by Dark Horse during those years, although Dark Horse also went after some titles on its own and Studio Proteus worked with other publishers. Toren retired in 2003 and Dark Horse acquired most of Studio Proteus's catalog. Since then Dark Horse Comics has continued to strike forward in manga, developing relationships with many new Japanese publishers and creators.

PREVIEWS: How do you select material to publish?

Carl Horn: Various ways; to keep up with new manga as it happens, we get several boxes' worth of manga magazines shipped over every month from Japan. Likewise we receive shipments of tankobon (what the Japanese call their graphic novel collections). And of course we check stuff out at our local Japanese bookstore, too. But being in the industry, often it begins just in the course of regular conversation with Japanese publishers asking us to look into doing this or that. We published Who Fighter — sort of a Japanese version of Weird War — based on the artist's sister approaching us at a con! It's by a very talented artist named Seiho Takizawa, but no one in the English-speaking world seemed to know about him; I mean, at the time, you could Google the dude and get zip.  And of course, as you can see from the story of Lone Wolf and Cub, we go after many manga based on the personal interests of the people who work here. I was the one who wanted to do Evangelion, which is contemporary, but I was also the one who pushed Satsuma Gishiden, which is a samurai classic from 1977. Mike Richardson, of course, has the final say on doing any book and he has been supportive even knowing they may not all work out — as indeed, Satsuma Gishiden didn't.

PREVIEWS: What current trends do you see in manga publishing?

Carl Horn: As mentioned previously, at the start of this decade it was a radical move to publish manga straight to graphic novel. When that later took off as a standard — pushed forward by Stuart Levy at Tokyopop, and supported by Kurt Hassler (who was manga buyer for Borders at the time, and is now one of the people behind Yen Press) — it was basically responsible for creating the bookstore market for manga that we know today.

But books are not computers, as Roy Batty would say, but physical. We publish physical books for people who like to buy them (and Amazon, maker of the Kindle, is one of our most important markets), but in exchange we have to try and meet the challenges that entails — which include having to ship, store, and shelve those books. When hundreds of different series are getting released, series that consist of multiple volumes that stores may order multiple copies of, it puts great stress on the system. That's why the trend in recent years is the omnibus — several volumes manga at once, bound in one cover and offered at a bargain price.

To show how this works with a recent example, the English version of CLAMP's Clover was originally released in 2001 by Tokyopop in four flopped [pages have been reversed from the original to read left to right] volumes at $14.99 each.  But in April, Dark Horse is releasing an unflopped [pages read right to left] English edition of all four volumes of Clover combined inside one omnibus book, now costing $19.95. A little quick math will show this means a fan can now get the entire Clover story for only 1/3 of what it would have cost them to buy the four volumes of the old version.

PREVIEWS: What can you tell us about upcoming projects?

Carl Horn: As a comics publisher, used to working directly with creators, it's always been Mike Richardson's ambition to do so with Japanese creators as well. He took the initiative to reach out to CLAMP, the four-person team responsible not only for Clover as mentioned above, but the character designs for the Code Geass anime, the manga Chobits, xXxHolic, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Card Captor Sakura... in fact, for any manga fan, I won't need to go on, since CLAMP have had 21 different titles published in English, more than any other Japanese creator. We are proud to say that CLAMP is doing their next series directly with Dark Horse. That in itself is a breakthrough, because almost every manga you see on the shelves here didn't come from a U.S. publisher working with the manga artists directly, but through those artists' Japanese publishers, or through a licensing agency.

Card Captor Sakura

The second breakthrough, however, is that we will be publishing CLAMP's new work in the Mangettes format, a 72-page graphic novel designed to enable simultaneous publication with the Japanese version. Every manga you see on the shelves here is also typically months or even years behind its first appearance in Japan. How it works in Japan is every new manga first comes out chapter by chapter in a magazine; then later those chapters get collected in a graphic novel, then later that graphic novel gets licensed and translated into English. That's why English-speaking manga fans have always had to wait — until now. Each new chapter of CLAMP's story will come out here in Mangette format the same week that the same chapter comes out in Japan. Japanese and English-speaking fans will be able to read a new manga at the exact same time. It's a statement from CLAMP and Dark Horse that the time has come for manga fans around the world to be equal — to let their new story reach their readers directly, and all at once.

PREVIEWS: What series would you recommend to someone who is new to manga?

Carl Horn: Of course, that depends on what kind of story they're looking for. Car chases and shootouts? You can't go wrong with Gunsmith Cats, the saga of a gorgeous bounty hunter mixing it up with hit men and drug lords in present-day Chicago. Hellsing is a manga that manages to take incredible clichés like Nazis, vampires, and sinister secrets of the Church, and succeed by stomping the pedal to the floor, with an English adaptation that fully conveys the energy and madness of the original. Gantz is ultrasleek ultraviolence, about a group of seemingly random people gathered together in an apartment, given high-tech weapons by a mysterious black orb, and forced to go out in a live-action role-playing game...where they have to kill people for real! Eden is a much more serious kind of science fiction story, about the survivors of an apocalyptic plague trying to rebuild and finding, as always, that mankind is its own worst enemy (Wizard called it the best manga of 2007, by the way). The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is modern horror with a mood of black comedy: its heroes aren't grim avengers or members of some mysterious order, but a bunch of poor college students who try and help the dead find peace because they can't get any other kind of job!

MANGA WORTH YOUR TIME!

Manga Month is here again, which means it’s the perfect time to check out some new series that are guaranteed to thrill, entertain, and satisfy any reader!

Black Lagoon	Gantz	Vampire Hunter D

BLACK LAGOON
Viz Media
Lock 'n' load with the baddest group of mercenaries ever to hit the high seas of Southeast Asia! Aboard their World War II torpedo boat, the Black Lagoon, Dutch the Boss, Benny the Mechanic, Revy Two-Hand, and Rock, the salaryman from Japan, deliver anything, anywhere. If you've got a delivery to make, and you don't mind a little property damage along the way, you can count on the crew of the Black Lagoon!
Volume 6 offered this month on page 300!

GANTZ
Dark Horse Comics
The last thing Kei and Masaru remember was being struck dead by a subway train while saving the life of a drunk who had fallen on the tracks. And yet somehow they're still... alive? They’ve seemingly been reanimated by a black sphere called "Gantz," who intends to force them to take part in an ongoing game of death, hunting aliens, alongside other ordinary citizens who've also recently died. The missions they embark upon are often deadly... and not everyone survives. Filled with action, moral conflicts and social commentary, Gantz is unrelenting.

VAMPIRE HUNTER D
Digital Manga
Set in a gothic future where science and old world superstitions coexist, one man stands between humanity and the creatures of the dark — the vampire hunter known only as “D”. Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi and illustrated by Saiko Takaki, Digital Media’s Vampire Hunter D series adapts their previously offered series of VHD novels, which also served as the basis for the hit film, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust!
Volume 3 offered this month on page 246!

Children of the Sea	Ikigami	Warcraft

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: ECHOES of NEW CAPRICA GN
Tokyopop
Culled from storylines that didn’t make it past the cutting room floor, the Battlestar Galactica manga takes place during Season 3 of the popular television series and features many of your favorite characters in stories that expand upon the mythos of this fan-favorite series, including Laura Roslin, Tom Zarek, Starbuck, and others!
Originally offered in Previews #244 (JAN094434)

CHILDREN OF THE SEA
Viz Media
When Ruka was younger, she saw a ghost in the water at the aquarium where her dad works. Now she feels drawn toward the aquarium and the two mysterious boys she meets there, Umi and Sora. Ruka's dad and the other adults who work at the aquarium are only distantly aware of what the children are experiencing as they get caught up in the mystery of the worldwide disappearance of the oceans' fish.
Volume 1 offered this month on page 295!

IKIGAMI: THE ULTIMATE LIMIT
Viz Media
People are apathetic, lazy, unmotivated. Rest assured that measures are being taken. Beginning today, we will randomly select a different citizen to be killed within 24 hours of notification. Congratulations! You have been randomly selected by the government...to DIE in 24 hours!
Volume 1 offered in Previews #245 (FEB094514)

WARCRAFT: LEGENDS
Tokyopop
Some of the world’s best manga creators join together to bring the World of Warcraft to life as never before! This series features tales of adventure, treachery, humor and bravery, told from the point of view of both the Alliance and Horde. Whether this is your first journey into Azeroth, or merely the latest in a long line of visits, this collection will not soon be forgotten!
Volume 4 offered this month on page 286!